


Bone Dance

by tangentti



Category: Echoes of the Fall - Adrian Tchaikovsky
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2019-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-08 12:14:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21815164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tangentti/pseuds/tangentti
Summary: After the war with the Plague people, the most difficult task is to maintain peace among the peoples of the Crown of the World.  When the bones of a Champion are found, who will wear this shape of power?
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Bone Dance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [schneefink](https://archiveofourown.org/users/schneefink/gifts).

The sun stood high in the burning blue sky, even on the river, the still waters reflected the glare, making it bright and broilingly hot. Asman sweltered under his woven hat, gold necklace sending glints out to unseen watchers, his silhouette a target for archers. Or so his Champion-soul felt, sensing purposeful motives among the reeded banks, while old crocodile simply wished for the cool of the river. He nudged the foot of the massive, black-scaled lizard basking at the bow of the boat, a sprawled figure with belly to the sky.  
It Stepped, lazily into man-shape without moving, Venat, straw hat shading his eyes and but a loincloth to cover himself, equally black belly to the sky. “Is it because your Champion-soul has daggers for feet that you always kick me, when a single word would do?” Venat didn’t seem to feel the potential ambush.   
Whispers would be threatening, so Asman spoke naturally, casually. “I kick you, old man, because you snore. You are missing the lovely scenery we’re sculling past here in the Sunset Lands.”   
Venat tilted the brow of his hat up, dark eyes glinting. “Striped rocks, just like the other canyons in these twisted lands, green bushes, brown reeds, and darting dragon-flies in black and blue, that are avoiding the reeds in the sunwards direction. I do not snore, I contemplate.”  
“How much nicer the heat is than the cold we faced when last we visited, no doubt. Do you want your,” Asman paused, “musicians to announce our arrival?” It was a better word than pirate band, if they wanted to be peaceful.  
Venat gave a single, sharp whistle, and the canoe following with his Dragon folk began to tap a drum, ullulate, and blow a rams-horn. The sound echoed from the deep walls of the cliffs, bouncing up and down the river. Certainly, they were not attempting a stealthy entrance into these lands.  
As though summoned by the music, one warrior after another Stepped into existence from the reeds to the banks of the river, bulky and short people, powerfully muscled legs. “We did not call for entertainment,” a woman said, “but it appears to have arrived from the River Folk. Full-Bellies we are, and what leads you so far from home?”  
Asman spread empty hands, “I am called Asman, a Champion, as well as K—- of the River kingdom. A little bird tells me of a Champion of Champions, buried in clay, found by the hunters of small secrets. Would that be your people?”  
“Right people, wrong waters. You seek Marsh, backtrack an hour, take the hard portage up the falls to Death-By-Fire creek. You really can’t miss it.” She stepped into a tiny amphibian, leapt and vanished in the water, as did the others.  
Venat made a cutting gesture, and the beat stopped, the horn player abruptly ending with a squawk. “And you think the Dragon people don’t know how to make friends.”

  
“Mine,” the squat, bearded man insisted. “My people uncovered the bones, my people are in need of a Champion, teach us the rites to discover the soul, just as you taught the woman of many tracks.” His bulging eyes seemed twice as large within his face as necessary.  
Maniye, standing next to Hesprec, pushed into the conversation, “I myself am Maniye Many-Tracks, and it is not so simple. A Champion is an ancestor soul, one that you must ride. Do your people have such among you?”  
“No, but you yourself are the first among wolves, amongst tigers, yes, I know of you. Amongst my people one must be the first, as I am already foremost of the Secret Seekers, it shall be I, Marsh, who fishes the Champion from the deep waters of time.”  
“You, who only follows where others have first broken ground! These bones are my peoples, I saw them from the air, you followed in my tracks.” The lean woman stood a head higher than Maniye, and jabbed a finger at Marsh, punctuating her words. She turned to Hesprec, “I am Cope, it means to sharpen beaks for prey, and these bones are those of a bird. Tell me the rites to bring this ancestor of mine into my soul, and the White Wings will never forget this favor.”  
“You saw me from the air, already investigating, and stabbed at me as though I were a silent brother, and the bones were but an accident at your feet. Taking my systematic investigation as your lucky break. Champions cannot respect a fraud.”  
“Full Bellies are more like Big Mouths, all shouting, no eyes.”   
Maniye was tempted to step to her Champion form and take them both in her jaws and shake them, but Hesprec smoothly slid between the two of them. “You both make good points. Let me consult the wisdom of the Serpent, to whom all things buried in the Earth belong, and let none break guest-law before I return. Come, Champion of the Crown of the World, I will need your advice.”  
Hesprec and Maniye walked to the overturned clay, and looked down at the mighty skull, larger than either of them, dagger teeth the size of a forearm. “Birds don’t have teeth,” Maniye commented.   
The snake-priestess tilted her head, “Some do, just like Serpent once had legs. They’re not wrong. You broke the ice, and now it will be easier for all the peoples of the Crown to find the Champions within themselves.”  
“You’re saying it’s my responsibility to decide?”  
“It’s your responsibiility to help, if you are the one standing closest to one in need. The Champion will chose who it wills, if you recall your trips to the godsland. You needed a Champion. It is for them to find out if they merely want it.”  
“What I want is for the people of the Crown to not forget our alliance and fall to murdering each other again over small insults. I worry that whoever raises the Champion will spark envy in the other.” Maniye saw Hesprec start to open her mouth, “Don’t tell me Serpent will provide.”  
“Already her twisted path brings a solution. We just need a little patience to discover what it will be.”

  
“Asman!” Maniye hugged him, “how did you know to come?”  
“Champion calls to Champion”, Asman said, a serious look on his face, before cracking a smile when Venat added, “your crow friend told us Maniye was looking into a King of all Lizards.”  
“That’s not quite what I said,” Maniye began, then jumped sideways, Stepping to tiger, when the voice spoke from behind her.  
“But accurate,” Marsh said, having Stepped from his stealthy form of a tiny frog. “You River-folk, I know are allied with the MIlk Tears, we know of long standing. Surely you understand that the Eyrie has enough Champions already. We are seekers of small secrets, and many. We would have a Champion to get respect from others instead of mockery as eaters of flies.”  
Asman found himself suddenly respecting his dead father, “I know river-folk do not dismiss any tribe for the shape of their soul.”  
Venat, “It’s a good trick to sneak up on two Champions. Don’t think too much of them, I killed one myself.”  
Marsh: “And yet my tribe needs more. Yes, we can hide, yes, even from winter we can hide when others starve, yes, we know the secrets of the world, but when war comes again, against the Plague Peoples or some other menace, who will call to the Full Bellies for aid when they can call a Champion?”

The flutter of wings falling from the sky, stepping gracefully from long legs and beak to a woman, slender and large nosed, standing by Asman. “You are the Champion of the River folk?”  
“Asman,” he said, “and Kasrani of the River“.  
“I am Cope, to sharpen beak for prey. We know you from the winter migration and count the people of the river as allies. Will you support me when the Serpent chooses who will become Champion? What must I promise for your aid?”   
“I know your people when they winter, although you I do not know. In the South, we respect the judgement of the Serpent and its priests.”  
“So you will not help me?”  
“If Hesprec says to help you, I will help. It is in her hands.”  
Venat called to Cope, “I can help you become Champion.”  
“How?”  
“Fight me and find out.”  
“I think,” she started, and Venat interjected, “And that is why you are not Champion. Seize my challenge, take a Champion-soul if you need to beat me. The little wolf-tiger girl, she would not take no for an answer, but take any path needed to victory. That is why she is Many-Tracks, the one who walks any path, and you have but one soul.”  
“So why are you not Champion?”  
“Haven’t needed it yet.”

The full moon shed light across the red clay, white bone, and glittering silver sand Hesprec had laid into repeated spirals around the skeleton, bringing a sense of motion as though the beast shimmered slightly left and right ad Maniye’s head moved. Hesprec had been slowly chanting and sifting sand all day, while the local tribes seethed. “You don’t,” she said, “know what to do.”  
The Serpent Priestess looked up from her art, “Serpent counsels patience, so I am teaching patience to those who need it.”  
“Buying time.” Venat shifted, black lizard shadow to standing man.  
“A cynical viewpoint, from one so young.” Hesprec shook her head, braids flinging, making her unwrinkled face shine in the moonlight. “Dragon, like Serpent, knows the art of the ambush.”  
Asman, walking up to flank Venat, “So do the Full Bellies and White Wings, and are looking for the other to fall. Maniye, I am a stranger here, but these people know you for a Champion of the Crown of the World. Do you know how to calm their passions?”  
“My Champion-soul wants to chase them away, iron and fire. I could just shake their leaders, Cope and Marsh. But I’m here to make peace. No one can be half a champion. I have been to the godlands several times before with Hesprec’s guidance, but she tells me this is not my shadow that falls across the beast.”  
Hesprec shrugged, nodded. “It’s true, the moon is over there, and we stand on this side.”  
Venat laughed. “Priestess points at a leaf floating on the stream and suddenly everyone falls to interpreting the meaning. Do they teach you cryptic sayings in the cradle?”  
Asman nudged Venat. “You are standing with the moon at your back. It is your shadow across the skull at this moment.”  
“Yes, and my head that aches from the croaking of frogs in the night, and the whoops of cranes at the dawn. Do you know the Dragon’s solution to riddles?”  
Hesprec finished a last spiral, brushed sand from her hands. “Serpent counsels patience to those who need it. Dragon’s business is Dragon’s own.”

“It seems I shall have to begin again,” Hesprec declared loudly, looking at the mess by the light of new day. Something had dragged a trail across the silvery sands, a mess of trampled footprints, scuffed erratically around the outline.  
“Tss,” Marsh spoke, “these footprints are those of a woman. The White Wings fear you will hand the Full Bellies the Champion.”  
Cope stalked up to him, looking down. “White Wings do not fear the Loud Mouths. Your tracking skills are as poor as your flying. These are the footprints of one woman in particular, Serpent Priestess. Do you care to explain?”  
“No.” Hesprec’s rainbow scale patterns glinted off her face.   
“I hear that in the south, sometimes people dream and do not know they are dreaming, acting out dancing, fighting while sound asleep.” Maniye began to spin a story.  
“Tss. This is a trick, like the nervous bride plays on her husband, so only the table gets laid.”  
“You speak as one with knowledge of such tricks,” Cope started, and then jumped back as Marsh drew a bronze knife and suddenly everyone had a weapon in hand.  
BOOM, came the drum, OOOO, sounded the horn, and and unholy hiss came from the skull of the beast. The black dragon stood, mouth wide, and gave another bone-chilling cry before shifting into man-form. Venat stood, arrayed with simple robes, “Fight her or fuck her, I don’t care. I am raising the Thunder Lizard, as Dragon would, by dance. Can you do better?”  
Hesprec mutters quietly to Maniye, “That man has hidden depths.” and then projects her voice strongly, some priestess trick of drawing attention, “Champions are before language, to talk is to have it slip away. Dance, or yield the Champion.”

Slow heartbeat from the big drum, fast ticking from the small wooden one, a long moment, then Venat pulls his secondary dancers to him, casting them down one at a time, strength overcoming weakness, and they writhe as overcome prey. Largest male asserts dominance and smaller males show submission.   
“Brek-kek-kek” a chant arises from the Full Bellies, seizing the rhythm from the drums, Marsh steps out, backed by a foursome of dancers, hopping with stamping feet, snapping angular motions as human, leaping forwards as frogs. He seizes now one, now another as they step into frog-shape, symbolically eating and casting aside, to rise again as humans. Everything smaller than your mouth is prey, he argues.  
Venat Steps, standing on two feet as human, reared up on hind legs as dragon, mouth wide, slapping scaly chests with his dancers as they Step. Biggest mouth needs bigger prey, wrestling for dominance. Only one can be the Champion, others follow.  
There’s an eerie whine, an undulating tone, as the White Wings spin cut wood at the end of strings, odd instruments to be worn on feet when flying. Cope, lands in a flutter of wings and Steps to human within a quartet of warriors, two men and women of the tribe. Her guestures are smooth, shaping her human body, rushing with wings upheld, first pursued, then pursuing. All that lives must see a new generation born, all that lives must mate to bring one forth.  
Marsh tilts his head, watching Cope, and Steps, stuttering from batrachian to human, hands rotating around and shaping a sphere, fiercely shouting wordless menace as his companions now mime enemies. Protecting the eggs, holding the territory for the next generation.  
Hesprec dances, slithering amongst all the dance, Serpent egg-thief, ancient of days. She pulls Maniye with her, twirling, and Maniye once more sees the space where the gods dwell, Tiger and Wolf and her Champion-shape arrayed.  
Venat pulls Asman into his pattern, pushing and pulling, knife sharpening knife. To be mighty is to strive, he argues.  
Cope, caught by two of her dancers and flung upwards, Steps to feathers and beak, glides to land within Marsh’s dancers, a Champion is unable to be contained. She kicks, stomping jabs just barely short of contact, a predator taking prey, and the Full Bellies fall back with elaborate deaths.  
Marsh pops into the White Wings dancers, struts and cries, superior mate showing quality by mighty calls.   
Hesprec mutters low, Serpent breaking all rules, “Cry challenge, Maniye Many Tracks, bring forth your Champion and see who the god falls upon.” Maniye Steps to her four-footed bulk, larger predator than any that walk, and howls. Asman snaps to his form of stalking death, quills and claws, not so dissimilar to the bones in clay, and joins in, a terrifying his from his Champion.  
They are anwered with a trio of booms, more felt than heard, as the ground shakes. Three Champions stand in the form of thunder, Cope, Marsh, and Venat all Stepped to a shape of Power.

By sunset, they were all astonishingly drunk on a concoction of the Full Bellies, concentrated by freezing during the winter, made from marsh flowers in the previous summer. “Did you know?” Maniye asked Hesprec, “that the only way to make peace was to lay a Champion on both of them?”  
Venat, sprawled against Asman, “I knew. Best way was to give them a common threat. Let them rise to the challenge, or let me walk away with the prize.”  
Asman pushed him slighlty, “Yes, that notorious peace-maker Venat of the Dragon People, spreading joy wherever he goes. Taking the burden of Thunder on himself as a Champion.”  
Hesprec, lolling on her back, shaping her rainbow-scaled face into a serious expression, “It’s a curse I laid upon him when first we met. How toothless and old do you find me now, Venat peace-maker?” before flashing a wide grin.  
Maniye, “Counting it up, I think she’s right. Peace follows wherever you go.”  
“Bah,” Venat said, “softening up you civilized folk for when I turn pirate again.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is of course the T. Rex from Hell Creek, Montana. Cope and Marsh lifted from history, as names of competing paleontologists.


End file.
